Would You Believe?

April 30th, 2009

I’m sorely disappointed. I wanted to begin this post with a clip from Get Smart, with Max running through the “Would you believe?” gag. Oh well, this clip below is still pretty funny. Get Smart is an interesting case study into the way early TV portrays ethnic stereotypes. Sometimes it’s truly atrocious. >_<

As you know, I’m really interested in this games and culture topic, and although I’ve discussed the issue to good length a couple of times here already, I’ve been rather apprehensive towards tackling it head on. That’s fine though as I feel better equipped for the task now than I have in the past. So I wanted to fix this issue and began writing a series of posts on games and culture. By the time I finished my introductory piece I was pretty chuffed with the results; an extended essay that covered more or less the basic framework of my idea. Writing out my ideas in full made me realize the great injustice that is the lack of discussion on games + the culture, linguistics and anthropological realms. With a primer written up in solid english, I figured that I owed it to the disciplines to allow this topic to receive the attention it deserves and went to the only place that I figured would accept it; GameSetWatch. Turns out the Mr. Carless really liked my piece and offered me a biweekly column on the site.

I guess I have ample opportunity to discuss this issue now, right? You can read my article here:

Column: ‘Lingua Franca’ – The Place Of Games In Culture

The name lingua franca means the prime language adopted in a multilingual community. I hope to discuss not just culture, but the linguistics side of things too, in the column. Because after all language = culture. I’ll post links to any new external pieces here, as I always do. For now, I have to clear up some homework and then figure out how to overcome stage fright for the next column entry.

Half the Man he use to be

April 6th, 2009

Just a wee bit of house keeping to take care of. Firstly, check out another one of my posts over at Zath. This one is generically dubbed How To Improve Your Online Communication – I’m no good with titles. I really enjoyed writing this at the time, but when it came to re-reading the uploaded version, something bothered me and I not dare finish reading it. Maybe you can tell me if it’s any good. I remember it being dangerously academic at the time of writing (yet at the same time being impossibly academic, due to lack of references, read from here if you lust for empirical discourse). In anycase Simon let it through, and that’s cool.

I’ve also unfortunately suspended my crusade to take on the Final Fantasy series. Not by choice, mind you. I was lapping up Final Fantasy II on the PSone Origins disc. Thoroughly enjoying myself too, FF II is ten fold better than the original, yet amidst the RPG happy days the game freezes during a compulsory non-interactive sequence, ensuring that I can’t progress any further. This occurred once before at a determined point in the game, but thankfully I could avoid it, this time I’m not so lucky. I was planning on playing a good chunk of the series on the Playstation 3 and GBA. Not a bad choice considering the first time the first half the series (FF I-IX, maybe give or take one game) saw release in Australia was the PSone. No seriously, like Dragon Quest, we got robbed pretty bad.

The problem is a PS3 issue I think. So I simply to switch to the PS2, right? No, unfortunately not. A few months ago we got a mod chip installed on the console, to play a series of games that (like the Final Fantasys) had skipped PAL release. I whined over these titles previously. Yet, the console seems to be struck with the inability to play much at all. I’m not sure if it’s broken or what. I have to wait for my twin to investigate, so I’ve simply given up all hope for the meantime. Emulation is a possible option, but considering I have to whole series hard copy on access, there’s no reason why I should stoop so low to play the game’s that are rightfully mine (or his – my brother’s). In the meantime I’m itching to play some Dragon Quest IV on the DS, or Valkyria Chronicles on the PS3. Thinking of Valkyria Chronicles makes me urge to finish Fire Emblem Sacred Stones. Then again, maybe I ought to leave that for when I return to Shanghai. Argh, it’s too hard.

Just on that topic though, I wanted to give a shout out to this post which missed the rounds of last month’s Link Out segment. Deceptively simple differences between two of my most dearly loved titles. Who would have thunk it?

Talking About Genre Conventions..

March 20th, 2009

My pesky category selection finally drove me to the point of some moderate restructuring, and now I’m finally happy about it. Here’s what I did:

Critique -> Game Discussion

I did this because firstly, classifying my writing on the textual analysis of games as solely begin critique is too limiting. I consider what I write about games as being more of “this is something interesting that maybe others haven’t talked about, let’s poke at that a little”. I guess it’s sometimes more like criticism of one aspect of a game, or comparatively tying a game to something external, like culture. In this regard, discussion is a better choice of words, anyways, using the noun critique to classify my writing contains a certain degree of bigotry in this current climate, so I think I’ll only use it as a verb occasionally.

Industry Issues -> Editorial

Editorial = one dude giving his opinions, industry issues is strictly industry related. It was recommended to me maybe a year ago to remove the word ‘editorial’ from the site slogan because it denotes seriousness and perhaps boredom. It’s good advice, but truth is, I write a whole bunch of this stuff, and if anyone finds the commentaries boring then they’ll likely find the rest of the site boring too. So rack off!

The other categories more or less explain themselves. Although I want to note that analysis does not involve games themselves (that’s game discussion!) rather issues, videos and so forth. Phew, all of that is sorted out.

I’ve also added a few more links to the blogroll over the past few weeks. I may as well point them out here: The Artful Gamer, Game Critics, Eurogamer, Crispy Gamer, 1UP’s RPG Blog (The Grind) and 1UP’s Retro Gaming Blog (Retronauts blog). These are all some of my favourite sites, whose linkage is well overdue. So check them out. I’ve also been back using delicious for random bookmarks, some that I share here in Link Out, some not. So if you’re interested in better things to read, try there. And that’s another shallow site update.

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